Search results for: "Discernment"

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  2. The Triple Training
     … Heightened discernment is meant to make it easier to get the mind concentrated. Heightened mind helps with your virtue, it helps with discernment. And your discernment helps with your virtue. It’s not the case that you perfect your virtue, and then you go to concentration, and then you go to discernment. You’re working on all three because they help one another along … 
  3. Strength of Conviction: 1
     … One of the Thai ajaans once said that we tend to think that discernment comes from reading a lot, from having a lot of ideas and developing our thoughts, but it actually comes from conviction. Because what kind of discernment are we looking for? We’re looking for the discernment that finds a way out. And for that kind of discernment, we need to … 
  4. Use Your Defilements
     … When the concentration becomes more reliable like this because it’s based on virtue, then your discernment is going to be more reliable as well. And where does the discernment come from? It comes from the skills you’ve developed. It doesn’t come from taking the texts and trying to interpret them in such a way that you can say, “Well, I’ve … 
  5. An Exercise in Sensitivity
    One of the teachings of the Forest Tradition is that when insight or discernment comes, it doesn’t necessarily have to express itself in terms of the three characteristics or the three perceptions of inconsistency, stress, and not-self. Anything that allows you to see that you’re holding on to something that’s making you suffer, and you don’t have to hold … 
  6. A Position of Strength
     … If you can’t remember whether you’ve encountered something before, or if what you thought would work doesn’t work, that’s when you bring in your discernment. Discernment is also very closely related to concentration, although it’s not the same thing. Some people can get their minds concentrated without much effort and without much discernment. They just plop down. For most … 
  7. The Discernment of a True Person
    There is a passage where the Buddha talks about the seven qualities of what he calls a true person or a person of integrity—the Pali term is *sappurisa. *These qualities are basically different aspects of discernment. Of the seven, only one of them has to do with something you can learn through words, and that’s having a sense of the Dhamma. You … 
  8. Good & Independent
     … That’s one reason why we get the mind quiet—for the sake of discernment—discernment as the ability to detect. Then there’s discernment as the ability to judge wisely. When the mind is really at ease like this, it gets more discerning as to which states of mind are easeful and which ones are a burden. What are you doing that’s … 
  9. Licking Yourself Clean
     … This is how discernment gets developed in the practice. It’s not a matter of reading a few books, getting a few ideas, and then cloning your mind to those ideas so that you see things as they’re described in the books. That’s not discernment. It’s just adding one more layer of perceptions on top of the layers you already have … 
  10. Wealth Worth Holding Onto
     … The same with discernment: To gain discernment, you’ve got to give up some things. You’ve got to give up a lot of your illusions, illusions that the mind likes to hold onto, that give you some comfort but they’re going to disappoint you at some point. So you have to learn how to give them up. Then you gain the wealth … 
  11. To Be Worthy of the Dhamma
     … There’s determination on discernment, determination for truth, determination for relinquishment, and determination for calm. The highest expression of all four of these determinations is nibbana, but the practice of meditation using these determinations is what gets you there. There’s a parallel here with the way the Buddha teaches breath meditation. It comes in sixteen steps—four tetrads, four steps per tetrad. In … 
  12. On Human Nature
     … purity, compassion, and discernment. As the Buddha said, the beginning of discernment is the question: “What when I do it will be for my long-term welfare and happiness?” In other words, discernment is based on two things: One is the realization that there are short-term forms of happiness and long-term forms of happiness. And the long-term ones, even if they … 
  13. Purity Comes Through Discernment
     … You get there through discernment and, of course, discernment needs other qualities to help it along. Concentration is an important ally. Mindfulness. Alertness. All the factors play their part, but it’s the insight, it’s the understanding, it’s the discernment that’s going to make the difference. And an important part of developing that discernment is learning, one, to master the tools … 
  14. Faith in Awakening
     … As for discernment, that’s when we develop our own. We see into exactly how the mind creates unnecessary suffering, how it can stop, and how it can master all the skills needed to stop. Discernment, in the Buddha’s teaching, is not just knowing things; it’s mastering skills. When we have these skills, especially the skills of discernment, then as Ajaan Lee … 
  15. Right Effort
     … This involves an element of wisdom and discernment. There are several ways of applying discernment to right effort. One that we’re probably most familiar with is the simple question of the amount. There’s that famous story about Venerable Sona, who was very delicately brought up—so delicately brought up, they say, that he even had hair on the soles of his feet … 
  16. Honest & Observant
     … When discernment is nurtured by concentration, it has great fruit, great reward. When the mind is nurtured by discernment, it’s freed from the effluents.” We’re looking for freedom. We have to build our search on virtue, concentration, discernment. We all know this, but it’s good to think about why it is the case. Notice that Buddha is not saying that you … 
  17. Discernment in Concentration
     … This is the kind of concentration that leads naturally to discernment because there’s discernment in the concentration itself. The stillness of the mind requires that you think about it and observe: What are you doing? And how are you doing it? You’re doing it through the aggregates. Remember, the aggregates are activities. When the Buddha defines them, he defines them as verbs … 
  18. The Strength of Conviction
     … It’s not the case that you get the mind really concentrated and* then* start thinking about discernment. You have to use your discernment in the process of developing the concentration in the first place. This is how discernment gets developed. Once it’s developed, then you can use it to lift things, to move things around, to pierce through obstacles. And this is … 
  19. Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana
     … When you’re immersed in sensual pleasures, it’s very hard to gain discernment. But when you’re staying with this kind of pleasure, discernment arises more easily. In fact, this is where discernment arises, in this power of concentration that allows the mind to settle down, be still, and have a sense of well-being. If the mind lacks a sense of well … 
  20. The Brahmaviharas on the Path
     … One of the results of the first stage of awakening is that you’ve completed all the work you have to do in terms of virtue, but you still have work to do in terms of concentration and discernment. That doesn’t mean, however, you didn’t work on concentration and discernment to get there. You needed them both. After all, they’re there … 
  21. Factors for Awakening
     … That’s a way of showing how mindfulness and discernment working together can bring the mind to concentration. The Buddha actually has lots of different ways of describing the order in which these things happen. Mindfulness always precedes concentration, but sometimes discernment comes first, then mindfulness, then concentration; sometimes mindfulness, then concentration, then discernment, depending on whether he’s talking in terms of the … 
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